Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Elsewhere in the world - 2

Things happen in other parts of the world. Honest. They are often worse than anything that happens here. That is hard to accept but this report might just convince a few of our readers.

A few weeks ago the Interantional Federation of Journalists produced a detailed reports about journalists in Russia who have died in violent or dubious circumstances. At the time they announced that Russia was the second most dangerous country in the world for journalists and media workers, the first being Iraq.

As Iraq is still going through a serious upheaval while Russia is, theoretically, at peace the first should surely be avoided to the latter.

The report is "based on the impressive work of Russia’s two media monitors, the Glasnost Defense Foundation and the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations" and adds:

For years the response from the Russian law-enforcement agencies has been inadequate. Investigations into murders of journalists have led to only 35 court cases (and 29 convictions). No information is to be had from police or prosecutors concerning over fifty other shootings, beatings and stabbings. There is an evident climate of impunity surrounding the cases where a journalist was killed for his or her professional activities. Investigations of the forty killings in this category have led to only three convictions.

The database is of some interest not least because it shows that Chechnya has claimed relatively few journalists (possibly because most are not allowed there). The biggest casualty rate is in Moscow. What more needs to be said?